Mistakes Screenwriters Make When Receiving Notes
Having an opinion on a screenplay is easy. Hearing other people's opinions on YOUR screenplay? That's much harder.
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Millions of people in this world want to be screenwriters.
But only a small percentage have the drive and the tenacity to execute on that desire. Putting your words down on the page and telling your story from beginning to end is not an easy task. Finishing a script is a huge accomplishment.
And it’s only the beginning.
As anyone working in this industry will tell you, screenwriting is rewriting.
Yet while there are hundreds of books and classes out there that will talk to you about story structure, there aren’t many resources about how to receive feedback. And feedback is essential. As Jack Epps, Jr. (Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick) says in his book, “Trying to give yourself notes is like trying to do surgery on yourself. It’s going to be painful and not very effective.”
It’s unavoidable: In order to make your script better, you need to get opinions about it from other people.
This process can be painful.
You just poured your heart and soul into your work. I know from firsthand experience the agonizing feeling of spending months (or even years!) on a piece, only to have someone point out its flaws.
But feedback, as Gina Biancini says, is always a gift.
It is only once you are open to it that you can benefit from all it has to offer.
Whether you receive studio notes from an executive paying you or notes from a consultant that you’re paying, it’s important to listen to outside opinions with the ear of a professional.
I currently work as a script consultant and producer.
Before this, I was a literary manager to screenwriters.
I have given notes to writers whose credits include Mad Men, Hot Frosty, P-Valley, Robot Chicken, Single Black Female, Fuller House, and more. I even did script coverage on Sicario back in the day when I was an intern at Gersh. I have given notes to writers just getting started on their journey and writers on the precipice of breaking in. I have seen how the professionals do it, how the amateurs do it, and everything in between.
I have given thousands of notes sessions to screenwriters over the past decade.
Many times this has included offering feedback on multiple drafts.
I have seen what works and watched a client sell their script. I have also watched brilliant, talented writers flail and fade away thanks to their own stubbornness.
Based on what I have seen and experienced, here are the 12 most common, most harmful mistakes I have seen writers make when they are on the receiving end of script notes. Commit one of these errors at your peril. You risk writing a draft that fails to improve, getting farther from your vision, and becoming more confused and frustrated than ever.
Or worse, you burn a bridge with a note giver who could have elevated your work and led to your breakthrough.
And now they just view working with you as a waste of time.
12 Biggest Mistakes You Could Make When Receiving Script Notes
Mistake #1: Treating all notes as equally valuable.
The best notes come from someone who speaks the same creative language as you.
You want to make sure that the person giving you feedback is someone that you trust and someone who has your best interests at heart. This is why it’s important to get multiple sets of feedback before deciding what changes to make to your script. Every piece of feedback is valuable—but only in that it gives you data on your reader’s experience.
Just because someone is a talented writer doesn’t mean that their notes are accurate.
And just because you paid for notes or coverage doesn’t mean that the person giving them can be 100% trusted to know what they’re doing.
Take the feedback you hear with a grain of salt. With time and practice you can learn who you should trust and who you can safely ignore.
Mistake #2: Treating all notes as equally urgent.
You can’t expect to make all the changes your script needs in one pass.
Screenwriting is rewriting. This means you can expect to write a dozen drafts of your script—maybe even more. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. Ideally, your script will improve with each new draft. But perfection is not the goal. Forward progress is.
Instead of trying to cram all your fixes into the next draft, pick the 2-3 most important, most upstream notes.
The most common, biggest notes that you should address first include:
The reader didn’t know who the protagonist was (or they identified a different protagonist than you intended).
Your theme isn’t clear (or isn’t aligned with your plot).
It’s unclear what the Central Dramatic Question of your script is.
If these main things aren’t in place, addressing any other notes won’t matter.
Because those elements will end up changing once you lock in a better theme and plot.
Mistake #3: Disregarding a note because it would take too much work to fix.
Screenwriting is hard work.
No one ever said this would be easy. And if they did, they were lying to you. Yes, writing the first draft of your script is hard. Finishing the first draft of your script is a huge accomplishment worth celebrating.
But that is just the beginning of your process.
Finishing the first draft of a screenplay does not mean that you’re close to being done.
It took me a long time before I realized the first draft was nowhere near where we were eventually going to get with the movie. The difficulty with the first draft is you know in your heart of hearts that half or maybe even two-thirds of what you’re writing is just going to go in the garbage can.
- Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon, Cool Hand Luke, A Star is Born, Mad Men)
If you get a note that means you’ll need to delete 80-90% of your script, don’t ignore it.
If you know that it’s right and it is hitting on a real problem, don’t shy away from doing the tough work of killing your darlings and starting over.
That’s why a growth mindset approach is so important here.
If you don’t love rewriting, you won’t ever get your material into a place where it will actually move your career forward. Do the work now so you’re not banging your head against a while, wondering why no one will respond to your emails later.
Mistake #4: Secretly hoping that there are no notes and that your script is perfect.
If you don’t want notes on your script, don’t ask someone to read it.
There are always going to be notes.
There will always be ways to improve your screenplay. For the past six months, I have been bringing professional screenwriters in to speak to my Screenwriter Brunch Club class. And every time they talk about produced credits and finished products, they always have things they would do differently if they could go back.
Even with movies that are highly successful and beloved.
Instead of sending your script off and hoping that someone likes it, think of yourself as a detective.
Getting notes isn’t about getting validation. It’s about getting to the bottom of where your problems are and figuring out ways to improve them. Hearing, “it’s perfect! No notes!” doesn’t mean that your script is perfect.
It means that the person didn’t care about you enough to tell the truth.
Mistake #5: Defending your choices.
You don’t have to follow every recommendation that someone gives you, especially if they’re not paying you.
But I recommend never ignoring a note.
If someone tells you that something rubbed them the wrong way, listen to this data. Get notes from other people. If everyone has something to say about a certain element or character, it’s worth addressing, even if you have to figure out what the “note behind the note is.”
But in the actual conversation, it isn’t productive to explain why you did what you did.
You can and should discuss your desires, intentions, and vision with your note giver.
The two of you can work together to find a solution for what you were trying to accomplish with that part of the script. But you’re not on trial here. There’s no point in trying to convince someone to change their mind about a note they have.
You won’t be able to explain your choices to everyone who reads your script.
You won’t be able to explain your choices to the audience watching your movie.
So if you need to explain your choices in order to convince them that they made sense, well then you’ve already lost. Great screenwriting choices are self-evident. Their reason for existing is already on the page itself.
Mistake #6: Explaining your story, your characters, or their choices.
Sometimes when I’m working as a Script Consultant, giving notes to a writer, I will say something like, “I don’t understand why this character would do XYZ.”
The least helpful thing a writer can do in this situation is explain the context required to understand the motivation behind that character's actions in that moment. Because when a reader says “I don’t understand,” or “I don’t buy,” they don’t want an explanation. And if someone asks you a question during a notes session, they don’t actually want you to give them an answer.
They want the answer to be in the next draft of the script so that future readers don’t have that question.
Mistake #7: Taking a note literally.
Just because someone is good at articulating their emotional reaction to a story doesn’t mean that they can accurately diagnose why they’re having that reaction.
If you take a note literally, you risk fixing it at the cost of causing even more problems.
For example, if someone says, “the main character wasn’t likable enough,” you might be tempted to dial back their flaws, give them some positive personality traits, or show them donating money to a homeless person. But savvy readers see these cheap tricks for the manipulative tactics that they are, and they get annoyed by them.
Instead of following the recommendation to make a character more likable, you could show the reason that they are who they are.
You could make them less likable but more interesting.
Or you could show them suffering deeply from the consequences of the choices that they make. Notes are great for pointing out problems. But it’s your job as the writer to find the solution that makes your script stronger.
Mistake #8: Asking for a solution.
As a Script Consultant, I try not to point out problems without offering some suggestions of possible solutions.
Even if what I pitch is the “bad version,” my hope is to get the wheels turning in a writer’s head so that they can use my suggestions as a platform to get to a story choice that they are excited about. But not every note giver is capable of this.
That doesn’t mean that their feedback isn’t valuable.
Especially if you’re getting notes from your manager or a development executive.
As a screenwriter, it’s your job to provide solutions. That’s what you’re getting paid (or hoping to get paid) to do. If someone doesn’t offer you a solution to the problem they pointed out, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. It means that you need to roll up your sleeves, get creative, and try to solve this puzzle yourself.
Insisting that they do this for you can come across as petulant or defensive.
Mistake #9: Losing your vision.
Now that I have told you to listen to every note, I am going to advise the opposite.
(Remember: No one ever said screenwriting was easy!)
Sometimes it is good to push back. The key is to pick 1-2 hills to die on. You have to have justification for ignoring a note and sticking to your guns. The justification for this comes from planting a flag in the specific vision that you have for your script.
Before you start writing, ask yourself, “Why am I spending time on this idea?”
What excites you about your script?
Screenwriting is not for the faint of heart. A project will take you months, even years to finish. So you have to know what keeps you going. If you don’t stay anchored to the 1-2 key reasons you’re telling this story, you risk losing the whole point of why you got into this in the first place.
If someone offers you a suggestion, listen to it.
But don’t take it it if it takes you away from the vision you originally had.
Mistake #10: Not asking questions.
Receiving notes should be a conversation.
Not because you're defending or explaining your decision making, but because this is your opportunity to ask follow-up clarifying questions about your reader’s experience and about what they’re trying to tell you.
You can also come into the notes conversation with questions prepared.
What areas are you unsure about?
Being able to guide the conversation keeps you focused and on track, and it makes the notes session as productive as possible. A risk you run with getting notes from fellow writers (or even a producer) is that they come into your script with their own voice and creative tastes.
If your story really excites them, they might be bursting with ideas for it.
This enthusiasm is awesome and it should flatter and encourage you.
But it risks taking you away from your original unique vision. Asking questions shows your listener that you value their input and are thinking about it actively while they talk. And it also allows you to keep things on track or what you need to know before moving into the next draft.
Mistake #11: Searching for the easy way out.
If you find yourself asking, “So is the solution as simple as…”
Just stop.
I hear this all too often when I give writers a note. Usually this is when it has to do with a character’s motivation being unclear. Too many times, a writer just wants to insert a line of dialogue to clarify someone’s intentions. Sometimes the solution to a scene is simple.
But sometimes a seemingly simple note is a symptom of a much bigger problem.
When a note giver mentions a problem, think about all the potential fixes for it.
Make sure that you consider a range of complicated and simple solutions. The one you should go with is the best fix that results in the strongest next draft. Not the easiest fix that results in the least amount of effort from you right now.
Because that would just end up causing you bigger problems in the long run.
Mistake #12: Getting offended or upset.
Feedback is always a gift.
If someone tells you something isn’t working with your writing, this is an opportunity to drill down on a story problem. It’s an opportunity to learn a new skill. I firmly believe that screenwriting is a learnable craft.
Once you accept that no one is born a great writer, your ego won’t be tied to your output.
A writer’s biggest source of pain is the fear of rejection.
The only way to avoid rejection is to never put your work out there and never show it to anyone. But that won’t help you become a professional screenwriter. It won’t help you achieve your goals, and it won’t help you find your audience.
You will not achieve fulfillment by hiding.
Inevitably, people will have negative things to say about your work.
Sometimes these notes are constructive. Sometimes they aren’t helpful at all. And sometimes, someone just doesn’t get you or doesn’t like the genre you write. Over the course of your long and prolific screenwriting career, you will encounter notes that are rude, offensive, or just plain wrong.
The mistake is to allow yourself to feel offended or feel upset.
Misery comes from worrying about the things you can’t control.
You can’t control what other people think about your work, and you can’t control what other people say about your work. But you can control how you react to feedback. Getting upset won’t make your script better.
It will just demoralize you.
Instead, let unhelpful feedback roll right off you. Ignore it and move on.
Some feedback, on the other hand, is painful but valuable. Let your ego get out of the way so you can apply yourself to your rewrite. Level up your script by incorporating the suggested changes. Or better yet, use the feedback to identify weaknesses in your skillsets and dig into those weaknesses until they become strengths.
It all starts in building the skill of getting good at receiving notes.
Screenwriting IS rewriting. Any professional screenwriter will tell you that.
But rewriting isn’t a skill that’ taught very often.
I’m changing that. The upcoming quarter of my Screenwriter Brunch Club will include a 12-week Rewrite Your Script class.
Enrollment opens next week! Click here to reserve your spot on the waitlist.